Desert mornings

I was already half-awake from the heat when I heard that first wavering, magnified voice wisp its way into the new dawn air where it lingered, suspended: “Allahuakbar allahuakbar.” Then they all started, hundreds of anonymous, warbling, masculine voices emanating from hundreds of sand-coloured minarets, blurring together into a chorus of static to become a grey smudge of sound above the flat, dusty vastness of the city, tangible, heavy, uniform, like a weighty leaden smog in the sky.

I peeled myself from the bed, careful not to wake you. I tried to glide the window closed silently, but it resisted, as so many things do in this country, and instead it rumbled raucously as it moved, one more cacophonous voice in the cloud of noise surrounding us. It shut with a final thud; then, blessed silence. I slid back into bed, keeping my blurry vision focused on your tanned face sleeping, or concentrating on staying asleep. You were – inexplicably, in this heat – covered chest to knee in gridded blue covers. Your sandy hair was matted from sweat and sleep against the left side of your head.

With the oppressive grey voices of the maulvis silenced by the glass and metal and dusty yellow cloth behind me, I could hear you breathing again, the whispery in-out-in-out of dry-moist-dry-moist air as your whole body minutely rose and fell and contracted and relaxed and lengthened and shrank under the severe blue lines of the duvet. All of you was alive as you slept. There are moments of beauty in this world that come in unexpected places at unpredictable times, and despite all the sunsets and sand dunes and overwhelming cliffs, that morning, that that sepia-tinged moment in that static-coloured dawn, was the first truly breath-taking thing about this country. I was struck by the colours of you – all those warm, vibrant shades of sandy-blonde/brown, and by the delicacy of your body parts – your flaring nostrils, your long rectangular fingernails, the skin of your back, your dreaming eyelids, all here, impossibly, in this place, with me.

It was already unbearably hot even that early in the day but I had a sudden urge to connect myself to this moment and defy the jumbled haze of pious noise outside our insulating walls. I tucked my chin into the space between your shoulder and your neck and you shifted your body closer to mine and we sweated in invisible conspiratorial solidarity and we slept, until our bodies woke us up.

I write poetry on your skin

I like the warm nudge
of your soft breaths on my back
when we are sleeping.

Untitled.

At the Edge of the World, the world stretches out before me. Hundreds of feet below me, infinite miles of desert disappear but never cease, and I realize the whipping wind is masking the frantic thud thud thud of my heartbeat in my ears, my nervous system is responding appropriately to this sudden and unexpected experience and it is telling me to be afraid, to protect my body, to step away, to – at the very least – crouch and lower my centre of gravity, reduce my surface area against the wind.

In my head, for the smallest of seconds, I entertain fleeting, exhilarating, discomfiting thoughts of free-falling.

I sit down heavily on the rocky, sandy ledge. The sun on my hair is hot, the stones under me uncomfortable, my feet are suspended hundreds of feet in the air, my heart pounds against its invariable cage, beating desperately for the safety of solid ground on all sides, for escape that my rigid body won’t provide. I am surrounded by the emptiness of blue above and brown below. The world is two-tone, it is height and depth, it is ground and air, it is the union of the end and the beginning. At the edge of the world, the world expands beyond neon lights and shopping malls and air conditioning and 10c per litre petrol, beyond desperate homemade wine and fortified-walls-enclosed-practically-free private lives. It yawns past the frustration of immobility and imposed dependence, the self-consciousness of budding relationships, the heightened awareness of bodies and their relationships with space and with other bodies.

It envelops these things. It does not necessarily make them matter less, but it makes the world matter more. At the edge of the world, perspective takes on new meaning. Perspective is wider than I have ever been able to imagine, in my limited head. I am compelled to let the rest of the world in, that vast, gaping world, the one I shut out – consciously and unconsciously – for its unsettling ability to bring me to scale, to dwarf me and my pettinesses, my shallow fears, my frailty, my guilt, my destruction, my tiny humanity. At the edge of the world, the smallness of my mind explodes inevitably into bigness, and I realize the size of the world, and its sheer permanence, and its strength relative to me.

I am not smaller here, at the edge of the world, or any more insignificant, just zoomed out, larger in mind, and infinitely more aware of enormity, and time, and the power of natural processes I don’t always understand and cannot control.

I think of heat

These days, I think of heat more than I think of anything else.  I think of the optimal number on my AC remote for daytime sitting and nighttime sleeping. I think of watermelons, refrigerator-cooled, sweet and fresh and eaten off the rind. I think of wind warmer than my body – the discomfort of it, the science of clothing that comes between it and your skin. I think of sitting still to avoid overheating. I think of car windows rolled up, or rolled down. I think longingly of chilly, wet, London bicycle rides, of cold beers and warm ales and biting wind and scarves and gloves and boots and socks. I think of the rippling, bright blue of a pool beneath my feet. I think of tan lines and wrinkles, of hair oil and brittle hair and hair loss and hair rendered into a furnace in the sun. I think of the smell of laundry left too long in the machine. I think of sugary dates baked ripe in the desert. I think of sweat, and how I don’t anymore. I think of sunglasses and sun. I think of sneezes triggered by bright sunlight – three rapid tchoos in a row. I think of green, of the cool shade of trees, of picnics on grass. I think of grass. I think of the ghosts of flowers in my hair. I think of white cannonball bodies launching into water. I think of the calm, rumbling sensation of being surrounded by water. I think of leg hair and underarm hair and razors and epilators and the impatient and cursory waxing of bikini lines. I think of precious water and too-yellow urine. I think of bright white when I’m covered in black. I think of kohla puris and koala bears. I think of languid cats, and languid humans. I think of the warmth on my skin of skin that is not my own.

I think of heat as pain, as joy, as apprehension, as welcome, as an annoyance, as lust. It is inevitable. It is inescapable. It is terrifying. It is desirable. I think of heat now, more than I ever have. I cannot help myself. I am glad. This adventure envelops me and my body responds instinctively, and my mind. 

Bennacht — A Ne…

Bennacht — A New Year Blessing — by John O’Donohue

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
And may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

Something beautiful to mark something beautiful

Illustration by Maria Persson.

A sodden new beginning

You gave me ten words to write a story. A long time ago, I asked you, as I’d been asking people, to give me ten random words that I could use as a writing prompt. So you sent them to me later that day, ten words so lovely, so beautiful, that it sounded like you’d sent me a poem. I wrote them out, over and over, whenever I needed to write something, I wrote them out. I wrote your words out so many times that I learned them, in order, by heart, and they took root at the tips of my fingers so that it soon became second nature to me to write your ten words any time I put my pen to paper. I wrote them out on pages and pages of notebooks, on receipts and scraps, on napkins and flyers, on computer documents and drafts of emails. But I never wrote anything past them. Your words plugged up mine. Whenever I felt those ants in my pants, that familiar itch to create something beautiful, I would write out your words, your sometimes-numbered ten-line poem, and tap my pen on line eleven, waiting, full of needing to say something but somehow having nothing to say.

I couldn’t write your words in my words. I couldn’t give them context. I couldn’t take them and make them mine. I was afraid. I didn’t know if you would stay or if you wouldn’t, and I couldn’t bear to make something I loved, something mine, with something yours. I couldn’t make something permanently ours. If you left, I thought I couldn’t bear having this reminder of you.

I write down the words again, but I can write past them today. Because, in the end, everything always changes, and I left, and you left, and we are still friends, but we grow and we are apart, so we grow apart with every day we don’t see each other, and besides, I realized something the other day, and it’s going to sound odd, but I think I fell in love with you-in-Islamabad. It’s strange to think of Pakistan as romantic, I know, but you in Pakistan were the most romantic thing I have ever encountered. Separately, you are both things that I love; together, you became something that I could not help falling in love with.

I don’t think I can love Pakistan like I did when it had you in it. I am back here now, but you are not, and it feels less beautiful, less fun, less spontaneous and free, and less sincere. Once again, I feel alone and restless and frustrated in my own home, without you to share it with. You helped me discover something I had my whole life. And Islamabad helped me discover you.

I don’t think I can love you like this anywhere else. It was you and the city, it was the things we could and couldn’t do, the things we did, the fun we invented, the people we didn’t have that compelled us towards each other. Removed from Islamabad, our relationship is not the same. We are part of a larger world now. Our lives are bigger than just you and me. You are palpably drawing away from me. I can feel people and events and careers and relationships pricking at our bubble. They are not relentless on purpose; they are simply resuming their natural place. We had been alone with each other too long. The city cocooned us, it enclosed us in a you-and-me bubble; we had it all to ourselves with no ghosts or baggage or outside world to distract us from that months-long conversation that never stopped, that instead just paused long enough for impatient breaths and contented sleep. You were all I needed, all those months, but these things rarely happen in the first place, and when they do, they rarely last forever. You and me and Islamabad, we could only be together for so long. Maybe it was a curse to meet you here, to experience this kind of impossible attraction that makes life stop like we are alone at the centre of time, but it is not a curse I can ever regret.

And now that we are gone, and my greatest fear is coming true, I feel the loss of you and Islamabad like a sudden and permanent loneliness that I can’t possibly ever be rid of. I have somehow lost two things at once, but they are both still here, still the biggest parts of my life, to serve as separate reminders of what I am constantly missing, underscoring the ache of knowing that I will never get it back. And knowing this, knowing that I can never love you like this anywhere else, is the saddest realization of all. Nothing is worse than knowing that you can’t love someone enough. But it also releases me from the fear that had paralyzed my pen and my words. Today, I take your words and I make my own story with them, so that I can stop calling them your words and make words – my own words – for you with them. This story is for you, for the love of my life that didn’t last, and the best friend I’ll have forever.

life

It is hot inside. I see you breathing next to me. You have kicked the sheets off your body, and I can see beads of sweat forming on your forehead, your nose, your upper lip. I can almost see the sweat misting off your skin. It makes a haze around you. I extricate myself from the sheets. I lie on my back. I turn my head to the left to face you. We are lying, skin-to-skin, in the hot, humid stillness of the room. I hear a generator start up outside. It is not mine. Your body glows in the neighbours’ sudden lamplight. It glistens. You shine next to me. You are beautiful, because I love you.

You shift, and I see the muscles move underneath your skin. I smell the sudden scent of sweat and sex. I smell the remnants of this morning’s deodorant. I smell myself on you. I smell us. We smell like Old Spice and coconut shampoo and wood-smoke and flowers and salt and humans and the lovely, musty smell of air from old-fashioned air conditioners. You smell like love. When I think of love, I think of this smell. When I think of love, I think of your heart beating against my back, your laugh, your breath, your warmth, your touch. When I think of love, I think of us.

You prop yourself up on one elbow and peer out the window. The moon is overhead, clear and bright, you report, but it isn’t fully eclipsed yet. I don’t turn to look. You shift closer and cradle your head in your hand. Your neck tautens and I can see an artery pulsing at your throat, so close I can almost feel it vibrating. I can see your heart beating; I know when it will beat again. I reach out my hand to touch the silky, warm skin of your neck, I anticipate your heartbeat, I bring our bodies into sync again. My fingers vibrate minutely to the beats of our hearts.

“It has only just begun,” I tell you, “and it’s meant to last a while. You can’t rush these things. They are natural and beautiful and they happen in their own time.”

You look at me, straight in the eyes, and my heart automatically beats faster, my stomach drops as I am reminded of things we share – kisses and contact and ourselves – and the memory makes me breathe a little harder and you smile at me. I have to take several deep breaths before I can think straight again. I realize your pulse has quickened along with mine. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and sticks a lock of hair to my skin. You wipe it off my face slowly, painstakingly, with such delicacy, like I am beautiful and fragile, like I am priceless, like I am some work of art, or something so perfect that you don’t want to disturb it, but so beautiful that you can’t help risking just a small touch. I know exactly how you feel. I am equally enamored of you.

You make me feel beautiful.

The room is very warm. The neighbours’ wedding party resumes. Our window hums with every amplified drumbeat. The air is very still, but restless all the same, brimming with energy. Or, we are very still, but restless. We are brimming with energy. Inside, I feel our hearts beating; outside, I feel the world beating – it thrives; it is joyous and alive. A bead of sweat trickles down my back and tickles me into shivering. I feel the pent-up energy in the room dissipate. The air seems to breathe again. My heart resumes a restful pace. I draw my hand from your body.I sit up.

Let’s go, I tell you. We dress ourselves lazily. We climb onto the roof in the moonlight. It is strewn with broken doors and broken flowerpots and broken furniture and other debris from the past. My house is old and weary. The roof inclines slightly. A cat, startled by our appearance, steals out from behind a sheet of discarded corrugated metal. You put your arm around me. Your hand slips under my shirt and rests on my hip. Skin-to-skin, once again, I lean against you.

The neighbours’ wedding party begins to dwindle. The music turns off. One-by-one, the guests begin to shuffle out, brightly attired, sweaty, happily full and exhausted. Some turn their faces upwards to look at the eclipse; the moon is fully eclipsed and is glowing orange in the sky. I can hear their awed murmurs. They do not know that we are here. They do not know that we can hear them, that we are seeing what they are seeing. They do not know what we share. They do not know that we are connected. They do not know that we are alive.

We share this moment with strangers.

I put my hand on top of yours. I smile, but nobody knows.

It’s only words

Without words, we are alone. Words are a bridge between my loneliness and yours. They let us share our worlds, they let us find common experiences, they let us be human. Without words, only I can know the feeling of your palm beneath my fingers, the smell of your breath when you lean in close to whisper in my ear, the joy of your smile, the barely-perceptible touch of your body standing next to mine. Without words, I couldn’t share with you the smooth bark of trees, the rainbows on my skin, the sun setting, the full moon on a clear night, the perfect evening temperature, the taste of fresh juice, the drenching rain, the sound of wind winding through trees, the scalded tongues from mix chai, the feeling of flowers in my hair, the crunch of guavas, the eerie solitude of a bat-infested shrine, the flickering of candlelight, the soft purr of a cat on my belly, the crashing of waves lulling me to sleep. Without words, my nightmares would be mine alone, and my dreams, and my joys, and my fears. We would be strangers in love, without the words to say it.

kissing and telling

He grabs a bottle of wine from the fridge, and some glasses. We ascend the spiral staircase to the sky and suddenly I find myself kissing him, or him kissing me, and I don’t mind. I am kissing an almost-stranger, on a rooftop in full-moon light. He kisses me like he wants to kiss me, like we are familiar, like we have been kissing each other for a long time. I think when he kisses me, I am, at least, guilty of pretending like this is perfect. I run my fingers lazily up and down his back like he does mine, I kiss him softly and gently like he does me, with all the tenderness of love and caring, and then we press our foreheads and noses together and close our eyes and breathe deep, contented breaths and we smile blindly to ourselves and savour this moment in which we can feel the close warmth of somebody’s presence, this moment in which we are not alone.